You need to be the owner of the file. So make sure you do the command with the same user that downloaded the file. Other then that, I can't imagine why you wouldn't be able to make it executable. I did download the sources yesterday, and quickly tried to compile it to see how hard it would be to make a package. The makefile will need some adjusting since it failed right away. Maybe I'll be able to goof around with it today, and get a package built for the repo.

Just to let you know. I investigated what it would take to package from source. I think I won't be attempting this There are no build directions, and I was having to make edit, after edit to makefiles.

I did find several rpm spec files that I could get build directions from. But they contained endless patches, and endless lines of "voodo magic". Porting this to VL isn't something I should attempt as I am not familiar with the player and I could easily bork the porting not knowing what the heck is going on.

I did find slackbuild in a directory on a ftp server using Google. The site kept timing out, but was able to read the directory. It appears to make use of a rpm. I couldn't check out the slackbuild though, the site couldn't be reached anymore.